ANNOUNCING THE Nebula Award nominees. I’m happy to see that Tobias Buckell’s Ragamuffin made the list, as I enjoyed that one.

UPDATE: Science fiction author Tony Daniel — author of Superluminal and Metaplanetary, both books I enjoyed — emails with a correction. Seems these aren’t quite nominees:

The way the Nebula voting works is that SFWA members formally recommend works throughout the year. After a work passes a certain threshold of member recommendations (currently, I think this is ten), it makes the preliminary ballot. The preliminary ballot is then mailed out and voted on by the members to form the final ballot – a group of four. At that time, another work is usually added by a committee appointed to make sure works of particular merit are not overlooked. (I’ve served on the screenwriting committee on three occasions, for example.) This brings the final ballot in each category to five. The other categories include the short story, novelette, novella and the screenplay (or other dramatic work).

What you’ve linked to is the preliminary ballot for novels. That list will be winnowed to four – with a fifth added by the novels committee, and that’ll make up the final ballot. The awards are going to be given out in Austin, Texas this year, I believe, on the last weekend in April.

Anyway, I think I’ve got all that right. The politicking within SFWA can be fierce at this time of year! Not that it isn’t the rest of the year, for that matter.

So I hear.